page_title: December 1965
section_title: December 15, 1965 (Wednesday)
hierarchical_section_title: December 1965 / December 15, 1965 (Wednesday)
caption_attribution_description: English: The Gemini VI, scheduled as a two-day mission, was launched December 15, 1965from Pad 19, carrying astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr., Command Pilot, and Thomas P. Stafford, Pilot. Gemini VI rendezvoused with Gemini VII, already orbiting the Earth.
context_page_description: The following events occurred in December 1965:
context_section_description: At least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 17,000 were killed in a single day in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by a cyclone.  Most of the victims were on the island of Maheshkhali in the Bay of Bengal, where the storm hit the coast at 12:15 in the morning, and a 12-foot high storm surge swept over its villages.  Thousands of others were killed in the settlements in the Kaksbajar District (known at the time by its British Indian name of Cox's Bazar). More than 80 percent of the buildings on Maheshkali were destroyed, and its entire fishing fleet, along with those sailors who remained on or close to their boats, was destroyed; the island of Kutubdia lost several thousand people in three hours.
  Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 performed the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit.  At 8:37 in the morning, the Gemini 6 rocket was launched from Cape Kennedy with Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford on board, then gradually adjusted its course to match the orbital path of Gemini 7, which had been sent up 11 days earlier with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.  By 2:27 in the afternoon, the two craft were six feet apart from each other, their closest approach and remained at the same speed until Gemini 6 moved away at 7:05 in the evening.  A later report said that the two spacecraft had come within one foot of each other at one time during their rendezvous. McDonnell Aircraft orbital mechanics engineer Marvin Czarnick would later be given credit was the single most responsible for the successful calculations that led to the linkup.
  Sergei Korolev, the top scientist for the Soviet space program, presented a preliminary design for the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft that could take the first Soviet cosmonaut to the Moon.
  The Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA) was formed by Antigua, Barbados and Guyana, in an agreement signed at Dickenson Bay, Antigua, which would go into effect on May 1, 1968.
  President Sekou Toure of Guinea announced that his nation had become the first in Africa to sever diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, in that the UK had not acted against Rhodesia by the December 15 deadline set earlier by the OAU nations.  Julius Nyerere of Tanzania would break ties with Britain later in the same day.
  Born: Ted Slampyak, American cartoonist who was the last artist for the comic strip Little Orphan Annie before its cancellation in 2010; in Philadelphia
caption: Gemini 6
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